


Being Seen

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Pencils In the Margins, Queer Themes, nonbinary characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 11:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Crowley plays with gender all the time.  Aziraphale resists change.  But the old rules are gone, and Crowley wants Aziraphale to have a little fun.





	Being Seen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).



Angels were meant to be inconspicuous.

Most of the time. There were always messages from the divine, [1] which usually ran, “Behold! You are chosen to—don’t be afraid—God has chosen you—I said, be not afraid—as I was saying, God has chosen—sir, madam, or other, please stop screaming . . .” And, of course, there was smiting. But neither of those were, strictly speaking, Aziraphale’s department. [2] He was meant to roam the world doing small miracles that reinforced mortal tendencies towards virtue, and he was not meant to be noticed while he was doing it.

The thing about thousands of years of habit is that it’s very difficult to break, even in your head. When Crowley came into the shop waving two tickets to _Coppelia_ at Covent Garden, Aziraphale’s first instinct was to say, _absolutely not, we shouldn’t risk being seen together like that._ And when he realized that Crowley meant to dress up, his first instinct was, _absolutely not, we shouldn’t make ourselves conspicuous._

Except they weren’t living under the old rules anymore, were they.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why _Coppelia?_ I like it. Cheerier than _Swan Lake.” Swan Lake_ was Aziraphale’s favorite ballet, partly because it made him cry. But he had noticed, over the years, that Crowley had an incongruous taste for happy endings.

“No, I mean, why are you getting a dress just for this?”

“Because it’s expected to dress up for the Royal Opera House, it’s fun, and I look amazing in a slinky black dress.”

This, Aziraphale reflected, was undoubtedly true.

“You should get one too,” Crowley added, prowling around Aziraphale. “Maybe not black. But a dress and some jewelry.”

“But—but I’ve had this coat for a hundred and eighty years! I _like_ this coat! And the waistcoat, and—”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “You fold them up,” he explained, with exaggerated patience, “and they do a thing called ‘still being there afterwards.’”

“I’m not sure, Crowley. I don’t want—” What didn’t he want? It was surprisingly difficult to articulate. “I don’t want to stand out.”

“How is dressing a century behind going to make you inconspicuous? Besides, you’re going with me, and _I’m_ going to stand out. Six foot ginger in heels, people tend to take notice.” He stopped moving. “You do want to go with me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do!” Crowley would never _say_ it, but it had hurt him, all those times when Aziraphale tried to distance himself. Aziraphale had made himself a solemn, secret vow not to make Crowley feel like that again. “But you know how much I don’t like to change my clothes.”

“Hmm.” It was the sound of a tempter who hadn’t given up, but was thinking of a different angle. “Remember that outfit you had in the eighteenth century? The one with the shiny shoes.”

Aziraphale sighed in regret. “Yes, I do.” He had left the clothes on a thoroughly bloodthirsty executioner; he rather didn’t like to think what happened to them after that.

“Can’t find lace on menswear these days. Or anything that would show off your calves. Remember how important that used to be, having good calves? Men’s fashion has gone all boring.”

“I suppose it has a bit,” Aziraphale admitted. He wondered if Crowley had anything to do with it. Promote drab fashion, claim that the resultant bad moods led to sin and caused a minute but measurable increase for Hell across the board? Possibly. It would fit with the demon’s style. Aziraphale knew that Crowley had done _something_ relating to pockets in women’s clothing, although he wasn’t clear on the details. It was ironic, because the pockets on Crowley’s favorite trousers barely had enough room to stick half his hands in them. [3]

“So if you want to wear something properly fancy, it practically has to come from the women’s section.”

“I don’t know, Crowley. I’m—” There was no way that _I’m not like you_ would not be misconstrued. “I don’t _enjoy_ new clothing. I enjoy old clothing. Clothing that I’ve had long enough for it to feel like _me._ Why is this important to you?”

There was a pause, as if Crowley wasn’t quite sure himself. “It’s fun,” he said finally. “All this gender stuff that the humans invented. You get to play different parts. Mix and match. Brew your own.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale noticed a book shelved in the wrong spot [4] and pulled it out. “I’ve never entirely _got on_ with gender,” he admitted. “I realize it’s important to the humans and I should make an effort to appreciate it as an aspect of Creation, but on the whole, I’d be delighted if everyone forgot about it for a while. Especially as applied to me.”

Crowley was studying him closely. “You always look like a man, though,” he pointed out.

“Well, yes, but that’s because it seems to be the easiest way to make the whole thing a non-issue. The humans treat it as if being a woman is, is _something,_ something with significance, something different from the baseline. They _notice._ It’s uncomfortable.”

"And it doesn't make you uncomfortable to play the same part all the time?"

"Just because I _look_ like a man, that doesn't mean I _play_ a man. In this day and age, that would mean caring about sport, for heaven's sake. I can't think of anything that interests me less." He went on tiptoes to shelve the book in its proper place. "What a man means, that changes all the time. I stay mostly the same." He turned back around. "I'm just not as comfortable with change as you are, Crowley. I'm sorry."

"It doesn't have to be clothes," Crowley said. "And it doesn't have to be for the ballet. But there has to be _something_ that would let you push the envelope."

Aziraphale was about to shake his head, but stopped as an idea hit him. "Actually, there is one thing I've wondered about . . ."

§

The nice thing about being a manicurist, to Lujayne’s way of thinking, was that you met and talked to a lot of people.

It was a pity that was sometimes the _bad_ thing about being a manicurist.

Lujayne finished up Mrs. Danforth’s nails with a very forced smile. Mrs. Danforth said, “Just think about it, all right?” by way of farewell, and Lujayne kept smiling long enough to tell her to have a nice day. And then she was out the door, and Lujayne gritted her way back to the appointment book, to see what she was in for next.

Oh. Oh, _good._

She turned around just as the door opened. Mr. Fell was, in Lujayne’s opinion, a person who never actually _needed_ a manicure. And as someone who sold manicures for a living, that was saying something. His hands were always in excellent condition. Sometimes, it almost seemed as if they hadn’t changed since his last appointment. She had come to the conclusion that he moisturized and so forth at home, and came in for the company. He was friendly, polite, and altogether what she needed right now.

He was also, to her surprise, not alone. This time, he was accompanied by a long, lean man in dark glasses.

“Miss Amari!” Mr. Fell said. “This is Anthony Crowley. We booked appointments back to back—what’s wrong?”

She wasn’t, Lujayne told herself sternly, being at all professional if Mr. Fell could tell that something was wrong just by looking at her face. “Nothing. Nothing, just—another client.”

“The woman who left just now? Curly hair, rather orangey?” He leaned forward. “What did she say to you?”

“She was—” Lujayne looked away. “She was trying to convince me that I’d feel more liberated without the hijab. I’m sure she’s well- _meaning,_ it’s just—never mind.”

“Well, apart from everything else, that’s just _rude,”_ Mr. Fell said, and looked at Mr. Crowley.

It was, in context, a strange sort of look. The nearest label Lujayne could put to it was _puppy dog eyes,_ and she couldn’t think of anything to have puppy dog eyes about.

Mr. Crowley, for his part, went on a fascinating journey of body language and facial expression. It started with, _really? You must be joking,_ and proceeded to, _no, absolutely not_ before taking a sudden swerve to _all right, all right, but I reserve the right to think it’s a stupid idea._ It was a journey that took him only a few seconds, as if _absolutely not_ to _all right_ was a road he traveled frequently and at great speed. And then, for no reason at all, he clicked his fingers.[5]

Mr. Fell smiled gratefully at him. Gratefully, and perhaps a touch smugly.

She was not, Lujayne thought, following the layers of meaning here. She wondered how long the two men had been dating, to have wordless exchanges like that. Not long enough for Mr. Fell to feel comfortable introducing Mr. Crowley as his boyfriend. Or perhaps that was just his age, the natural reticence of having grown up when such things were outright illegal.

“I was thinking something a little different today,” Mr. Fell said.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Do you have any polish that would suit me? Maybe something a bit gold-ish?”

Lujayne carefully didn’t look surprised. Mr. Fell—well, he was gay, obviously, and someone that many of Lujayne’s other gay clients trusted implicitly. But he wasn’t flashy. “That sounds like a great idea,” she said. “Special occasion?”

His face lit up. “Crowley is taking me to the ballet.”

He called his boyfriend by his last name? Somehow, it fit with his general air of old-fashioned-ness. If it came to that, Lujayne had never entirely believed that Holmes and Watson were just good friends in all those old stories, and they had called each other by their last names, too. “Oh, _wonderful!”_ Lujayne said. “Well, we have a number of colors that might suit you. You have to realize, they won’t look exactly the same in the bottle as they do on a nail, with a proper base and top-coat, but give me a moment and we’ll have a look at them . . .”

It was difficult to paint nails with Mr. Crowley in the room. He had a tendency to prowl. And for reasons that she wasn’t sure of, Lujayne wasn’t altogether comfortable having him behind her.

Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t contribute much to the conversation. Mr. Fell talked about his bookshop, as usual, and about happenings in Soho—some of which Lujayne had heard about from her other gay clients. A club that had been there since the eighties was closing down. "I sincerely hope it won't be another Starbucks," Mr. Fell opined. "A small coffee shop, that would be lovely, but not one of these chains. I must say, in some ways I miss it when Soho was all seedy.”

No-one knew exactly how old Mr. Fell was. Lujayne had a lot of clients from the gay and the queer community, and the younger ones had the same answer: _I don’t know, but he’s been here longer than me._ But there were a few older people who wouldn’t approach the subject at all. Desiree Marcos, who had considered herself a drag queen and then an MtF transsexual and then a trans woman and would probably be around from sheer stubbornness, over eighty years old, when or if the language changed again—all she said about Mr. Fell was, _you treat him right. Whatever he wants, he gets. He earned it._

She had refused to be drawn on how he had earned it.

“The thing about Latin,” Mr. Fell was saying—he had changed subjects by the time she reached his left hand, “is that church Latin is very different from classical Latin, so if you’re going to attempt to fake a medieval liturgical music score, you ought to know which you should use—” Lujayne jumped slightly, not for the first time, as she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. “My dear,” Mr. Fell said, “will you please _settle?”_

There was a pause, and then Mr. Crowley distributed himself across the other chair.

“Thank you. So, as I was saying, this very amusing confidence artist came into my shop . . .”

By the time she was finished with his nails, Lujayne thought they looked excellent. A delicately iridescent gold shade with the slightest tint of pink about it. “Shall we get started on you while those dry?” she asked Mr. Crowley.

It was difficult to tell with the dark glasses, but she thought she got a hard stare. “No.”

 _“Crowley,”_ Mr. Fell chided.

“I don’t like not being able to move my hands while you can’t move yours,” Mr. Crowley said.

The prowling suddenly snapped into a new context.

“I think you’re being a touch paranoid,” Mr. Fell said.

“Paranoid, of course I’m paranoid. You know better than anyone else how I _got_ paranoid. And it isn’t as if you don’t get twitchy about your own things. Like being seen together in public.”

“We ought to pick out a color first anyway,” Lujayne said hastily. “What did you have in mind?”

She was unsurprised when Mr. Crowley ended up picking a duochrome polish that looked black until the light struck it, at which point it was a deep red. He seemed the type.

§

“I remember when they used oil lamps,” Aziraphale said quietly to Crowley.

“Probably best that they stopped. How many times has this place burned down, again?”

Crowley, predictably, had spent at least six thousand dollars on his dress alone, which was a jet black evening gown with a slit up the side. Aziraphale didn’t know the cost of the snake-themed choker, or the high heels with snake-themed straps; he just knew about the dress because Crowley apparently had an intricate system for figuring out which billionaires were most personally annoying to him on any given day, and adjusted all his credit cards accordingly.[6]

The end result was that, in Aziraphale’s not entirely unbiased opinion, he looked stunning.

He was drawing looks, and after a moment, Aziraphale realized why. It wasn’t just his looks or his height, significantly taller than Aziraphale himself with those heels. Crowley wasn’t adjusting the humans’ perception.

When he was Nanny Ashtoreth, he had done it as a matter of course: tweaked things subtly to make sure that the humans never wondered about his gender. He wasn’t doing that anymore.

They would be reading him as trans. Humans being humans, there were always people who would care about that sort of thing. And even if they didn't care, they would notice.

Aziraphale's first impulse was to adjust the humans' perception himself. He even started to do that. Then he hesitated.

They didn't have to be inconspicuous.

The old rules didn't apply. They didn't have to be inconspicuous. They didn't have to pretend that they didn't know each other, they didn't have to hide, they didn't have to do any of it.

Aziraphale hooked his arm through Crowley's. "Shall we stroll down that way for a little, before we go in?"

Crowley gave him an amused look. "Are you showing me off?"

“Well,” Aziraphale said, “why shouldn’t I?”

“No reason at all.”

They walked, calmly and stately, back the way they had come. Being viewed, being seen, and it was _all right._ “This is fun,” Aziraphale said, somewhat in surprise.

“Told you.”

“Maybe next time I’ll wear a dress, too. Only not slinky. Something with ruffles.” Something bronze and brown that would go nicely with Aziraphale’s fingernails, which he had decided to keep that way for some time. Possibly for the foreseeable future.

Crowley sounded resigned. “It’ll look like it came out of a history book, won’t it.”

“Probably,” Aziraphale admitted cheerfully. “Just so long as you don’t mind being seen with me.”

He got one of Crowley’s looks in response. This one seemed an awful lot like, _I would indulge you in anything so long as I get to point out how ridiculous you are along the way._

Definitely ruffles, then.

**Author's Note:**

> 1Well, from Heaven, at least. After the Apocalypse-that-Wasn’t, Aziraphale had found a new capacity for awkward questions, and one of those questions was how recently anyone in Heaven had actually heard from the Almighty, and what She had said. Nobody from Heaven was taking his calls, and none of them would have answered the questions if they had, but Aziraphale had a strong suspicion that the answers would have been very surprising to the average angel. And would have then led to more questions, because the trouble with awkward questions was that you never ran out of the things.  [ return to text ]
> 
> 2The major exception was St. John of Patmos. Aziraphale had been very careful not to alarm the man, and was proud of his success. Instead of the usual gibbering, John had simply offered Aziraphale some of the very nice mushrooms he was enjoying, and Aziraphale had spent a confusing afternoon trying to work out how many eyes he had and what fraction of those were a comforting number for humans. He had come out with a different number each time. [ return to text ]
> 
> 3 This was because Crowley’s favorite pair of trousers were women’s jeans. It was possible that he hadn’t thought things through. [ return to text ]
> 
> 4 Aziraphale did have a shelving system for his bookshop. It was not based on the Dewey Decimal system or any other human invention. It was entirely possible that it could only be comprehended by a millenia-old nonhuman being who spoke Enochian. (This was not as unusual as it sounds; many small used book stores have a shelving system based on ancient Enochian, or possibly the phases of the moon.) This meant that, in theory, Crowley ought to have understood it too, but he seemed to favor a shelving approach based on putting books back where they would most irritate Aziraphale. Aziraphale still hadn’t figured out if he was doing it on purpose. [ return to text ]
> 
> 5 The emu was later captured humanely and sent to a reserve, but Mrs. Danforth remained nervous about large birds ever after and, in fact, once keeled over in a dead faint due to an abrupt gander. It would be pleasant to believe that Mrs. Danforth thereafter developed a new sense of humility and stopped trying to impose her own sensibilities on everyone around her, but people are rarely so easily managed, even with demonic miracles and large ratites. [ return to text ]
> 
> 6 According to Crowley-before-Armaggedon, causing minor unexplained fluctuations in a billionaire’s net worth was all in the service of Hell because the billionaires would take it out on their accounting firms and the members of the accounting firms would take it out on each other, leading to ill will of the sort that increases the sin quotient subtly but measurably across the board, and thus he was being properly evil every time he bought a high-ticket item. According to Crowley-after-Armaggedon, he didn’t care particularly about the sin quotient anymore but it certainly wasn’t a _good_ deed even if Elon Musk deserved the headache for being a wanker. Aziraphale couldn’t help but notice that either way, the end result was Crowley getting a dress out of it. [ return to text ]


End file.
